Best Teknoparrot Games

[Siri]

Ive made a half hour discussion video all about Outrun 2 and it's variants (Coast 2 Coast, Online Arcade and SP) as well as some of the regional differences in the games between Eastern and Western releases. If you're a fan of the series please check it out. Thanks!

-Xbox Outrun 2: Arguably the best looking 6th Generation console version of the game; can display in 480p anamorphic widescreen and upscales nicely into 720p when played on an Xbox 360 (although does suffer from some occasional frame rate judder and sometimes problems when transitioning from one course to another on 360). Contained the original 15 OR2 tracks and 12 cars (4 more than the arcade Chihiro game) and lots of original mission modes and challenges. It also contained two bonus courses that weren't subsequently included in Coast 2 Coast or Outrun Online Arcade, made up of tracks from the old Sega arcade racers Scud Race and Daytona USA 2. The Japanese Xbox version of the original Outrun 2 had some cosmetic and minor gameplay changes made to the bonus stages to make them look and play more accurately to the Scud Race and Daytona 2 arcade games, so the Japanese version is arguably the best version of Outrun 2. There's no force feedback ability if you're using a wheel, but outstanding controls with an Xbox Joypad, with incredibly intuitive rumble that lets you feel all the gear changes and bumps in the road. Easy to use system link (for I think a maximum of 6 players?) if you've got multiple Xboxs with a good stable game connection throughout. To me, feels like the hardest version of the game. The hard level cars actually feel hard to control, especially with manual transmission. Also contained a bonus unlockable version of the original 1986 Outrun.

-Outrun Online Arcade (PS3 & Xbox 360): A digital only version of the game that contained only the 15 SP tracks, as well as a reduction in the number of cars back to 10 and a reduced selection of tunes. Displays in 720p HD, but looks significantly better than the PC version as it has superior bloom effects (it looks way better, even with the bloom effects in the correct folder and working on the PC). The bloom here looks a lot nicer than the Xbox versions of OR2 and Coast 2 Coast as well (It's been mentioned to me that the Xbox version of Coast also has issues with it's bloom - the sun is completely missing in the OG Xbox version for the OutRun 2 SP courses, most notably, in the opening Sunny Beach stage the Sun is suppose to be visible and shining when you climb the first hill). Despite being a highly stripped down version of Coast 2 Coast the game did feature the end of course animations that were missing in all the other versions of Coast 2 Coast, apart from the Japanese PS2, and it also featured force feedback for racing wheels too. It also lets you play the Heart attack mission modes and features the 15 stage Marathon mode. I've never played the 360 version, but playing on a PS3 with a pad, the rumble functions are extremely week, to the point I can barely feel it do anything with the settings at maximum (also I hate playing racing games using the R2 and L2 triggers on a Dualshock 3 pad, your fingers constantly feel like they want to slip off them). Despite the lack of rumble, the game handles really well and has the easier handling of C2C rather than OR2. Was playable online back in the day, but no local system link options. Has been de-listed now, so you can no longer purchase it from PSN or XBLA.

-Outrun 2 SPDX (Teknoparrot): The actual arcade version of Outrun 2 SP DX hacked to run on Windows 10 PCs. I own Windows 7 so haven't been able to play it (boo!) but from what I see it's just as nice looking as Outrun Online Arcade (in terms of bloom) and it's got ALL 15 OR2 and SP stages in and you can play it in resolutions up to 4K. Also supports FFB and network play. Doesn't feature all the content from Coast 2 Coast, with some cars missing and none of the challenge modes. The graphics can apparently be problematic when played in Tekknoparrot without certain downloadable fixes.

Wow, wasn't planning on that turning into an essay, but there you go. PC version, played with all the fixes using a wheel is the best version for my money. If I ever upgrade to Windows 10, that may change...

Great comparison. I actually use the Coast 2 Coast PC edition on my machine so happy that it is a decent version. RPCS3 is still not fast enough for outrun, CBX and Xenia are not ready yet. And the flakky TP edition has unfortunately too many issues to be considered right now unfortunately: random crashes, black roads, shadows, and it does not seem like Reaver will ever fix it.

I know some stages and cars are missing, unfortunately, but the special stages of "Coast 2 Coast" that do not exist in the arcade version are present ! And it's good ! For the rest the bloom effect is very good (better than PC version) and no bad framerate for me with the latest RPCS3 build. What is your hardware, because you need a good PC (for me Ryzen 5 3600 + GTX 1070Ti) ? Well Teknoparrot version is probably the best, but the ratio/resolution is not good (image stretched in 1080p i think) but no graphic problems with all fixes like MrThunderwing says

There isn't a fix for that, I think the way I worded it straight after talking about the LAN might've confused you. The shortcomings I was referring to were the things like the lack of rumble in pads, the massive deadzone in the wheel X-Axis and lack of force feedback.

There is no 4:3 option for the Lindbergh version. All previous assets were rescaled/adjusted for a 16:10 aspect ratio on a direct 640x480 canvas, with excess bars intended to be cut off by the LCD display with overscan.

Lindberg had games in many aspect ratios and resolutions, but OR2SPDX is straight up 640x480 / 16:10.

So, what I learned this week is that there's a type of emulation that isn't really emulation in the traditional sense. For a particular era of arcade games (2005 up to the present day), the games ran on PC hardware and were written in regular PC code. This means that the process of getting them on your home PC isn't the traditional emulation route (where your computer is emulating a different machine entirely) but an arcade loader (where a loader program sorts out what you need to run the original PC based code on your own PC at home). You're effectively running PC games on your PC, so it's far less demanding than emulation.

The results of my experimentation (and thanks so much to @StoooTube for answering my questions when I got stuck) have blown me away. I have a 2007 PC with a second hand Nvidia 560Ti graphics card in it. It wouldn't run stand a chance of running, say, a PS3 or Xbox emulator. But it plays PC games from 2007 very well, so I'm using the Teknoparrot emulator and playing Afterburner Climax, Sega Racing Classic, Daytona 3, Outrun 2 and Sega Race TV and they are all running superbly. It's also strange how, for example, Outrun 2 plays really well on a joypad (the controls feel exactly the same as the home PC conversion) which is amazing when you think the arcade code is designed for a steering wheel.

The downside to all this is that it's the most tweaky system I've come across in emulation. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason as to which game file is the executable, and there are some issues that make no sense to me at all. For example, Chase HQ 2 ran extremely slowly, but as soon as you press start the game itself plays at full speed. Unfortunately this meant that calibrating the controller took ages and you have to do that (just the once) before you can play it. Some games do not allow you to insert a coin and you need to find the arcade settings screen and put the game on free play , after which it works fine. Some games need a patch for AMD graphics, others need a patch for Nvidia. The executable for Outrun2 happens to be hidden in a folder called Jennifer. Sometimes there's no obvious way of knowing what exe file to pick. A number of the games get files quarantined by your virus protection. It's not very intuitive!

But this is all a one time faff. Once you have the game set up, it's one click to start and it's proper arcade games in the home, good, recent stuff, working amazingly well. The best bit for me was being able to play and spend time on Sega Race TV, which I played once in Blackpool and never saw again. A very silly game (and not Sega's best by a long way) it's a racer I've always wanted to play again and I can't believe how perfectly it runs on my old PC.

This is an area of emulation I'd not seen before and it's pretty exciting! If you have the patience to tweak, it's quite extraordinary to have these brilliant arcade games running perfectly on a fairly basic PC. And if you can run Outrun 2 in 4K, well.... Glorious!

There are a few different 'emulators' like this (arcadeloader was one of the first I think). They aren't emulators in the strictest sense, they just allow arcade games that run on standard PC hardware to be run on your own pc, presumably taking care of security and I/O in some cases, although i've never delved into it.

You will struggle to find these freely available (i.e. through archive.org) as a lot of the games are recent-ish and will still be out in the wild. There is a french forum called Emuline that have a good subforum for arcade pc loaders, but you will find yourself trawling through various download link sites and the restrictions you get without paying for them.

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